


The Snowy Day and Other Sordid Tales of the Midnight Crew

by Vanny



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-23
Updated: 2011-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vanny/pseuds/Vanny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little set of Midnight Crew fics too short or too silly to put up independently. Includes obligatory "why is it snowing in the desert??? LET'S PLAY IN IT" fic, as well as some shipping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Snowy Day

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before Slick had his robo-arm! Man that was a while ago.

“The hell is this shit?” Spades Slick bares his teeth at the sky, annoyed by the unprecedented fall of thousands of tiny white flakes, enough to make the air hazy.The Alternian sun looks dim and faraway, but it’s there, and that’s strange of itself: the desert is cold only at night, and now it is high noon and Slick’s breath is steaming above him into the air.

The other three are coming up behind, Deuce’s telltale shuffle the closest. He stops beside Slick, puffing slightly. He comes barely to Slick’s chest, and speaks with an unfortunate sort of chirp, which Slick expects in his ear any moment.

“Boss! Hey boss!”

There it is. Deuce is oblivious to Slick’s grimace--and most other things. “What?” he snarls.

“What is it?” Deuce points a stubby finger at the sky.

“You think I know?” Slick holds a hand up to shield his eyes as Droog and Boxcars crunch up beside them, roughly in step. Boxcars is frowning, but there’s no telling if it’s real consternation or just the way he holds his face; he’s taken his hat off for some reason, and his head is collecting a dusting of white. Droog looks sullen, probably because it’s getting on his suit (the fancy son of a bitch).

They stand there and glower at it for a while, all but Deuce, who cannot be said to glower even at the worst of times. He breaks the silence with a contented sigh. “It is just so nice,” he says, “I hope it keeps happening!”

And it does. In the space of a few hours, the multicolored sand is blotted out, and the eaves of the ghost town are piled high with the stuff. Droog has Crowbar’s crowbar, which in addition to destorying temporal artifacts, seems to work perfectly well as an ordinary crowbar. He is using it to pry the boards from one of the less broken windows, in his shirtsleeves, bending awkwardly at the waist to keep the grime off his slacks. He wads up a ball of rags and jams it into a ragged hole in the windowpane, and dusts his hands off. “There.”

“You want coffee?” Slick calls. It’s taken a ridiculously long time to brew and pour it one-handed, and as far as he’s concerned, it had better damn well be appreciated.

“Come siddown,” Droog says shortly. “Idiot brigade’s gonna put on a show.”

“I said do you fuckin’ want some coffee!”

“Sure.” Their shoulders brush as Droog appears at his side and leans down to take both mugs himself, ignoring Slick’s muttered curses.

As it turns out, the idiot brigade _is_ putting on a show. Deuce and Boxcars have improvised insulation by wrapping their exile rags over their suits, and are frolicking in the white stuff. Or Deuce is frolicking; Boxcars is more sort of lumbering.

Slick glances once at Droog and sees that he is smiling a little with just the one corner of his mouth, before turning back to the window to watch Boxcars roll Deuce into an enormous white ball of the frozen stuff.


	2. Make it Home

It took a while, but we finally brought the boss home. Turns out the bitch locked him in English’s vault, and wasn’t nothin’ in there but a command station same as the rest of us got stuck with. It stank. There was blood all over, even gummin’ up the keyboard, but he was still goin’ at it. That’s the boss for ya. Nothin’ stops him. It made me real mad to see him that way, stabbin’ at that arrow button when he couldn’t hardly hold himself up.

He pulled a knife at first, but he missed Droog. He was showin’ his teeth, and his gums was all pale. Droog shook his head at me a little and I came on over. Droog’s like that, clever enough to say stuff just by movin’ his head. So I came on over and got my arms up under Slick’s--his one arm and one stump, anyways, and the stump was kinda soggy. But I ain’t some wimp gettin’ all crybaby over a little blood, not even the boss’s.

So I just picked him up--I always forget he ain’t all that big--and we carried him home, Droog walkin’ ahead and me behind him with Slick, and Deuce trottin’ along with his hand in my pocket.


	3. Mending

Diamonds Droog is sitting with one leg crossed over his knee, a shirt spread out across his lap, mending a tear in the elbow. Boxcars is a little distance away in an undershirt, occupying Droog’s desk, cards spread out over receipts and checkbooks, absolutely mangling a game of solitaire. It’s an embarrassment. He overwhelms the chair. He’s totally focused.

Droog turns back to the shirt. It covers his lap. It’s a coarser material than he’d ever wear, and the top button is loose from Boxcars’ insistence on buttoning it all the way, which makes him look more thuggish and bull-necked than ever. Droog can see the marks of other mendings. Boxcars is hard on his clothes. It’s past time to bully him into buying new ones, but Droog spreads one hand across the fabric and punches the needle in again.

“I love you,” he says, tone so flat that Boxcars barely looks up.

“What was that?”

“I said I love you.”

“Shit, I know that, Droog.” Boxcars tosses a toothy grin over his shoulder. Droog says nothing, and his expression never changes. With a chuckle, Boxcars heaves himself up and goes over. “Ya know, I can’t never tell what ya fixed, ya do such a good job. Good as new. If ya--”

Droog cuts him off before he can start reeling out a painful joke. “You clean up those damn cards, I don’t want to wake up with a desk full of axes.”

“Yer no fun,” Boxcars scowls.

“Nope.”


End file.
